ALFRED JODL (Defendant): Alfred Jodl.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you repeat this oath after me: I swear by God—the Almighty and Omniscient—that I will speak the pure truth—and will withhold and add nothing.
[The defendant repeated the oath.]
THE PRESIDENT: You may sit down.
DR. EXNER: Generaloberst Jodl, in the English-American trial brief it says that you are 60 years old. That is a mistake. You became 56 recently. You were born when?
JODL: I was born in 1890 on 10 May.
DR. EXNER: You were born in Bavaria, and both of your parents are descended from old Bavarian families. You chose the military profession; what was the chief reason for your choice?
JODL: A great-grandfather of mine was an officer; my father was an officer; an uncle was an officer; my brother became an officer; my father-in-law was an officer—I can well say that the military profession was in my blood.
DR. EXNER: And now I should like to hear something about your political attitude. To which of the political parties which existed in Germany before 1933 were you closest in spirit?
JODL: As an officer all party politics were entirely remote to me; and especially the offshoots of the post-war period. If I look at the background from which I come, the attitude of my parents, I must say that I would have been closest to the National Liberal Party and its ideas. In any event, my parents never voted anything but National Liberal.